Curve Fitting in Excel

ECE 2 Circuits and Systems Spring 2009
Page 1 of 12

Plots, Curve-Fitting, and Data Modeling in Microsoft Excel

This handout offers some tips on making nice plots of data collected in your lab experiments,
as well as instruction on how to use the built-in curve-fitting routines in Microsoft Excel.
Excel is a good utility program for data recording and plotting, and is actually used a lot by
practicing engineers in industry. The main reason for its popularity is simply cost and
convenience (most people have it on their computers) making information sharing very easy.
It is also easy to learn and use. With a little extra effort you can write your own
computational routines using the built-in VBA (Visual Basic) compiler.
If you already know how to create a basic X-Y plot on Excel, then skip ahead to page 3
and the section called Changing the Plot Appearance.
Simple X-Y Plots
Table 1 includes measured data on the current-
voltage relationship of a diode that we can use for
demonstration of the plotting and curve-fitting
features of Excel. Enter the data in two columns as
shown in the figure below, select the two columns
and then choose Chart from the Insert menu
(or just click on the Chart icon in a toolbar if it is
visible). You will then see a dialog box like that
shown in the figure below. Select the XY (Scatter)
chart type as shown. In this case there are some
options (sub-types) that control whether each data
point is highlighted by a marker of some kind, and
whether a straight- or smoothed line is shown
connecting the data points. That isnt really
important at this stage because you can always
change the appearance later, but lets start by
choosing the smoothed-lines with data markers (highlighted selection in the figure).

Step 1: Enter
data, then
select the
columns you
want to plot
Step 2: Select
Chart from
the Insert menu
or toolbar

Table 1 Sample Diode I-V Data
I
[mA]
V
[Volts]
0 0
0.001 0.24
0.005 0.34
0.01 0.36
0.02 0.39
0.05 0.43
0.1 0.46
0.2 0.49
0.5 0.53
1.0 0.57
2.0 0.60
5 0.65
10 0.68
14 0.69
(Note: this is
actual data
recorded by Prof.
York on a certain
diode. In this
experiment I
expected an
exponential
dependence so I
made a list of
diode currents that
would yield a nice
plot, and then
recorded the diode
voltage that
produced those
currents. )
Page 2 of 12

Now select Next and you will see the Source Data dialog box. Click on the Series
Tab and you will see something like the following:

This gives a snapshot of what the graph will look like so far, and the source of data. It
looks a little strange for a diode characteristic because Excel has assumed the first column
represents the horizontal coordinate, so we need to switch the X and Y data range around.
This is easy, just interchange the data ranges for the X and Y values. It is also useful to give
the data series a name (like Data or Measurements) which will appear in the legend.
Now select Next and you will see the Chart Options dialog box below. Here you can add
labels for the x- and y-axes as I have already done:

Page 3 of 12

At this point you can just select Finish, and you will see the finished plot appear in the
worksheet as shown below.

Changing the Plot Appearance
The plot above is the default Excel format for plots, which looks okay on a computer screen
but not great in a printed document or presentation. If you right-click anywhere within the x-
y axis, you will see a list of options for changing the plot appearance. First lets change the
plot background from gray to white; just right-click in the plot and select Format plot
area to change this. Now right-click again and select Chart Options to add major
gridlines on the x-axis. I also like to reformat the gridlines to be dashed lines as follows:
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Di ode Vol tage V, Vol ts
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

I
,

m
A
Data

Page 4 of 12

In the above I also moved the legend inside the chart (just drag it in there), resized the plot,
and eliminated the border around the chart area.
This is starting to look like a nicely formatted plot, but there is still one change I would
strongly recommend, and that is increasing the size of the markers and the weight of the
connecting line, and the fonts. Do this by double-clicking on one of the data points to launch
the appropriate dialog box. You can increase the font size of the axis labels and legend by
double-clicking on those labels and making the appropriate change. After doing this I get the
following:
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Diode Voltage V, Volts
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

I
,

m
A
Data

This is a suitably formatted plot for a lab report or power-point presentation.
Log Scales
Since many of the diode data points involve small currents, they appear close to zero on the
linear scale shown above. A logarithmic scale is sometimes used to effectively expand the
scale for small currents. This is done in Excel by double-clicking on the appropriate axis (y-
axis in this case) and then selecting the Series tab in the Format Axis dialog as shown.
At the bottom you see a check box labeled Logarithmic Scale; click this and press Okay

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Now your plot should look something like this
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

I
,

m
A
Data

The data seems to fall on a straight line, which is what wed expect for an exponential
dependence. A couple of minor formatting issues can be addressed here; first note that the x-
axis intersects the y-axis at 1 mA; on a log plot like this wed prefer to have the x-axis and
labels lie along the bottom of the chart. You can do this by going back to the Format axis
dialog box (by double-clicking on the y-axis) and typing in the appropriate intercept value
for the x-axis ins the Value (X) axis crosses at: box. In this case the appropriate value is
0.001. Note that you could also adjust the limits of the vertical scale if desired, but in this
example Excel has automatically chosen appropriate values. So we now have something that
looks like this:
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

I
,

m
A
Data

Here I have also removed the line connecting the data points in preparation for the next step,
which is to add a second Model curve to compare the data against our diode model. Just
double-click on one of the data points and click the Line: None box in the Patterns tab of
the Format Data Series dialog.
Curve-Fitting, or Trendlines
As you know, diodes are usually modeled by a relationship of the form

/
1
s
qV nkT
I I e
(
=

(0.1)
where n is the ideality factor,
s
I is the reverse saturation current, and / 26 mV kT q ~ at
room temperature. How can we use the measured data to determine appropriate parameters
for the saturation current and ideality factor for this diode? There is an easy way to do this
Page 6 of 12

using the Trendline feature in Microsoft Excel. Just right-click on one of the data points
in the chart and select Add Trendline; you will then see a new dialog box appear as
shown below:

Grab this corner
with the cursor
and drag it down
one row to
remove the I=0
data point

You can see that there are a few different options for curve-fitting the data, but the
important one (Exponential) is grayed out. Why? The reason is that our data set includes
an (0) 0 I = data point, which you can never theoretically have on a simple exponential
model! So the trick here is to remove that data point from the plot; the easiest way to do this
is to just grab one of the top corners of the boxes enclosing the data and adjust the range to
exclude this point. Do that for both the current and voltage columns, and now you should see
all of the available curve-fitting options when you select Add Trendline again:

Now select the exponential model and hit Okay. Excel will find the best fit of the data
to a model of the form
V
I Ae
o
= and plot this on the chart as shown below:

Page 7 of 12

0.0001
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

I
,

m
A
Data
Expon. (Data)

A pretty good fit in this case. But wed really like to know what the curve-fit parameters are,
right? Double-click on the trendline and select the options tab to get the following:

Here we want to select Display equation on chart. You can also change the name of the
trendline to Model. Now with a few additional but minor formatting changes we have:
y =5.48E-06e
2.13E+01x
0.0001
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

I
,

m
A
Data
Model

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The last step is to simply compute the parameters we want from the information Excel has
provided. In this case Excel has told us that
V
I Ae
o
= is a pretty good fit to the data when
6
5.48 10 A

= and 21.28 o = . Note that our vertical scale is in milliamps, so the fitting
parameter A also has these units; in other words, 5.5 nA A = . Now, going back to our diode
model in (0.1), we see that for
s
I I the model reduces to
/
s
qV nkT
I I e ~ , so we must have

5.5 nA
21.28
s
I A
q
nkT
o
~ =
= =
(0.2)
You can use Excel to compute the ideality factor from the last equation. Assuming the data
was taken at room temperature I get 1.8 n ~ , which is comfortably in the range wed expect
for real devices.
Plotting Multiple Data Series
As an example of plotting multiple curves, lets make a plot showing how the diode would
behave at other temperatures using the model parameters just provided by our curve-fitting
exercise. Note that the saturation current
s
I is temperature dependent, approximately given
by the relation

3
/
( )
s
g
E kT
I T T e
(0.3)
where
g
E is the bandgap energy of the semiconductor (1.13 eV for Silicon). If we know the
saturation current at some reference temperature
0
T , then we can write

3
0
0 0
1 1
( ) ( ) exp
g
s s
qE
T
I T I T
T k T T
| | | | | |
=
| | |
|
\ . \ . \ .
(0.4)
Below Ive made some room in the original spreadsheet so that columns F-G-H will describe
the predicted currents at the three different temperatures entered into boxes F9, G9, and H9.

Enter the first
two points and
drag down to
fill in the rest
Constants found
from data-fitting at
room temperature
Temperatures (in
Kelvin) at which we will
compute the diode
current in columns F-H

Page 9 of 12

The fitting constants for the diode saturation current and ideality factor and the measurement
temperature
0
T are included in F4:F6 as shown. To define the voltages at which well
compute the currents, enter the first two points (which define the starting value and the
increment) and then drag downward to fill in the rest as shown. The range of 0.0 to 0.75
Volts should be fine.
Now we can enter the equation for the diode current in the appropriate boxes. There is a
simple way to do this in Excel such that we only need to enter the formula once. Start with
the temperature-dependent saturation current. First click on the F10 cell and enter the
formula from (0.4) as shown below (formulas are always preceded by an = sign). Note that
the temperature is referenced as F$9; this tells Excel that no matter which cell this formula
ends up in when we drag it around, we always want to keep the 9 row reference constant.
Similarly, the measured diode saturation current at
0
T is referenced as $F$5, which tells
Excel to keep both the column and row reference constant when the formula moves. Without
the dollar sign in front of a row or column reference, the reference will change according to
the relative movement of the cell content.

Equation in box F10 for
computing the saturation
current at 280K
Last step: grab the corner
of box around F10 and
drag across to H10

Once the formula is entered you can grab the corner of the box around F10 and drag it to
H10 to fill in the saturation current for the other temperatures.
Now enter the equation for the full diode current from (0.1) in box F11 as shown below.
Note that this time we reference the voltage as $E11, because we want the voltage to change
as we drag the formula down, but we dont want it to change when we drag it sideways. Now
grab the corner of the box surrounding F11 and drag it down to F26, the last cell in that
column; you should now see the following

Page 10 of 12

Equation in box F11
for computing the I-V
curve at 280K
Saturation currents at
each temperature
Last step: grab
the corner of box
around F11 and
drag down to F26
to fill in the cells in
this column, then
drag to H26

Finally, grab the box and drag to H26 to fill in the other columns. Now, each cell should
compute the diode current for the voltage in the particular row, and for the temperature at the
top of the particular column that the cell appears in. If you then click in any of these boxes,
you can see how the references to the voltage and temperature change as you move from cell
to cell.
To plot all three of these curves together we could use the same procedure as before and
select the range of data to plot (E11 through H26) and then insert a new chart. However,
doing it that way means wed have to go through all of the formatting stuff again. A
somewhat easier alternative is to copy and paste a previously formatted graph (like the one
we made for our measured data) and then just change the source data for the plot. To do this,
right click somewhere in the new chart and select Source Data. Click on the Series tab
in the dialog box; to add a new data series, then click the Add button. For example, after
doing this and entering a new name Model at T=290K I get the following:
Page 11 of 12

Click here to add a
new line to the plot
Click on these
symbols to define
the location of the
X and Y values

The next step is to define where the X-Y data for this new series is located. The easiest
way is to click on the little spreadsheet symbols as shown above, and then use the cursor to
select the appropriate cells in the spreadsheet. Note that if you do it this way, you have to
first delete the ={1} entry in the Y-values box, otherwise you will get an error message.
Now do this for the other two data sets for T=300K and T=310K. Now all of the data should
be on the plot, and we just need to do some formatting to polish it up. Here is what I have on
a log scale:
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

I
,

m
A
Model at T=290K
Model at T=300K
Model at T=310K
Data at 300K

Note that Excel doesnt usually make very intelligent choices of colors and line widths for the
plots. For good quality reports and presentations you need to choose bold, dark colors and
thicker line widths than the Excel defaults, as I have done here. Also note that the data point
Page 12 of 12

markers (black diamonds) appear on top of the red model curve at 300K; to make this happen
you need to double click on one of the markers to launch the Format Data Series dialog
box, and then select the Series Order tab to define the order in which the plot lines are
drawn.
As a last note, most people do not realize that Excel, like many of the MS Office products,
includes similar drawing features that appear in PowerPoint. To access the drawing tools you
just select View ToolbarsDrawing. This allows you to add graphics or comments to
the plots very easily. For example, here I have reformatted the plot for a linear scale,
adjusted the scales a bit, and added a load line by drawing in a straight line through the
appropriate intercepts. I also Cut & Pasted the schematic for the load line into the Excel chart
from a PowerPoint drawing.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

I
,

m
A
Model at T=290K
Model at T=300K
Model at T=310K
Data at 300K
Load Li ne

This is a high-quality plot, suitable for lab reports and other publications. The main point here
of course is demonstrating how Excel can be used to do the routine data plotting and analysis
that we need for ECE 2 and other ECE coursework, but the above also demonstrates some of
what we discussed about the merits of using series resistors for diode biasing, i.e. that it
greatly reduces the variation in bias current over temperature.
There are other nice features of Excel, and the only way to learn them is to experiment
with the program. In my experience if there is something you want the program to do,
chances are you can find a way to do it if you try hard enough.

Curve Fitting in Excel

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ECE 2 Circuits and Systems Spring 2009

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